


Smooth Stone

by Botanophillic_Zombie



Series: Desert Anecdotes [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Statetalia
Genre: Gen, imagine being able to understand my writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26353237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Botanophillic_Zombie/pseuds/Botanophillic_Zombie
Summary: In the heat of summer, María thinks about the last time she and Inya’a sat this close.
Relationships: California & Arizona(hetalia)
Series: Desert Anecdotes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915645
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Smooth Stone

Your skin is cool against mine. It’s a grace and a surprise, since my own so often burns with the fullness of the sun- and the blaze sometimes feels like all I have ever known. 

You lean back against me, hoping to angle your head more fully into the breeze of the fan. I smile and make some sort of joke. You open one of your eyes to look at me, and the hazel ring reminds me of the moon through smoke. 

I’m glad I was able to make you laugh. 

It doesn’t feel like long since we sat side-by-side like this, only in anguish instead of quiet. Not the brash kind of hurt that crashes through you and squeezes your lungs- the steady thrumming one. The sort that worms its way under your skin and around your arteries, filling the marrow of your bones to weigh them down and sitting heavy on your heart. 

It doesn’t feel like long, either, since your eyes were a beautiful dancing black. Nearly brown, but only in the same way a black cat in the sun is brown. I remember looking at them, wide with fear as you dove into my cot. Crying over a story you had been told- a woman in rags wandering by the river, you told me. 

There was no coolness to your skin then- it was slick with the sweat of the solstice night and the heat that radiated from you was a winning rival to my own. 

I didn’t want to let you in, but I did. And you stayed there every night until gunsmoke and dust from the hooves of charging horses obscured those new-moon eyes from mine. 

It doesn’t seem like long since I walked with my hair covered. It was a pain and you knew it- you saw the tight braid and then bun I wrapped it up in. You suggested I cut it one single time, and I must have given you a look worse than I realized. I don’t remember you ever asking again. You brought me all sorts of things to help- most common was bandannas, you loved seeing what you could make me wear. How much my reputation mattered to me. I remember the whip-crack of the sopping wet one you brought me. It sliced across your upper arm and you  _ laughed _ and  _ laughed _ .

I pulled sweater hoods tight over my head, began wearing scarves. Knitted things slouched over my skull and sometimes you would look over and tug it down over my sickly hairline. 

I loved you all the more for it. 

I remember when the same disease came for you, though swifter. You had always had your beautiful patches of pale skin- spotted and dappled like a cat. But the part creeping up the back of your neck never changed your hair- the curls fell in their same dark ringlets. It came for you faster than it came for me-  _ mine _ grew in like normal hair would, I thought I was going grey. But one morning you woke, surrounded by more shedded hair than you had ever seen, and in its place was a crop of blond baby hairs.

I was worried your eyes would turn the same shock of electric blue as mine. You were worried that you would have a sickly dead-grass mane just as our northern neighbors kept under their own hats. 

We stayed up late that night, I remember. You curled up in my lap, going between fitful tears and dull, emotionless eyes. 

Your skin was hot, and it was wrong. 

You shift next to me again, making some long, drawn-out groan. The horrible heat. I look over at you again, staring, maybe, but you’ve never minded. You know the darkness that whirls behind my eyes, just as I know yours, and you let it run its course.

For a moment, I think back to that first thought of mine. The two of us side-by-side on the battlefield, breaths heavy and daunting, the shared stink of blood and sweat and horses. We didn’t look at eachother- we already knew what we would see. Sagging, bruised eyes. Dried and cracked lips. Bloodstains we could not wash away no matter  _ what _ we scrubbed with- the raw skin a testament to our efforts. 

Then, the similar haunt of our dark brown eyes as they met. 

You nudge my side, and I blink hard, a confused smile already forming on my lips. You lift your phone to show me the name of a hole-in-the wall ice cream place, and I feel it split into a grin. 

Live in the moment you say. Stay with me.

All thoughts of anything I hate get left behind the swinging door. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I’m thinking of making these stories into a kinda project- like there wont be any ✨amazing plot✨ but I want to write out a few bits and pieces of María(cal.) and Inya’as(ari.) history. Stay tuned for sibling stories that swing violently between angst and fluff!


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